In her first blog for the iVillage blog series CelebVillage, actress/ filmmaker and mom of two Ricki Lake shares why she's so passionate about her childbirth documentary film, The Business of Being Born, and its follow-up series and why she feels they've "revolutionized" her purpose in the world.
About eight years ago my dear friend, director Abby Epstein, was visiting me in Los Angeles and I approached her with an idea for a film project about midwives and natural birth. I showed her home video footage of my younger son Owen’s birth in our New York City bathtub and gave her a copy of my childbirth bible, Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery. I am sure Abby thought I was nuts and was probably thinking this would not be a commercially viable project (to say the least!) but she took the material and politely agreed to look it over.
A few weeks later, Abby called me and said she was blown away by her own ignorance on the subject and thought it would make an amazingly compelling documentary. We spent the next three years filming birth in hospitals, homes and birth centers and ultimately created The Business of Being Born (which Entertainment Weekly has said was the "rare documentary that is actually changing lives. It deserves to be called revolutionary.")
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